Horror of Horrors - **UPDATE**

[Daylon]

So, after a very long week, I have some good news.

As some of you know from this thread

- I had a catastrophic hard drive failure last weekend, losing everything I had shot in the last 6 months.

While in the midst of preparing myself for seppuku, I got a PM from Zeroendless -

"Best yet recovery app i used for windows

http://www.file-recovery.net/"

After trying 3 different software programs, (all requiring about 30 hours a piece to scan a 100gb hard drive) - and coming up with nada, I was beginning to lose hope.

The best they could do was find the jpegs I had on my DESKTOP on the problem drive.

SO.. I scanned, and waited.

"Found, 10k jpegs - recover?"

h3!! yes! I got back about 90 percent of what I had lost. Best $45 dollars ever spent in the history of photography.

And this is after massive partition corruption, failed recovery tools, and re-partitioning with Partition Magic (which formats the drive!)

Also got back about 75% of my NEFS - some showed correct thumbnails, but were corrupted when I opened em up in Lightroom. (anyway to recreate / rebuild nefs? they show full size (15meg))

SO, Active File Recovery 7.1 is the answer (at least for me). LOL! Can you imagine the glowing testimonial I'm going to write to em?

I'm happy, bride is thrilled ( had to call her and say "Umm..there's a little problem with your pics....), and best of all, I don't have to reshoot / refund!

SOO.. Zeroendless gets several all-expenses-paid lunches from a very thankful photographer!

Thanks Daniel!

D.

[kachina]

Congrats! Glad to hear things worked out.

[jagphoto]

Happy dance for you! That is great!

[Bella]

Glad to hear it all worked out . .. and thanks for lighting a fire under me to do what I know I need to and back up the past couple of months worth of images on a place other than my main hard drive.

-Cindy

[Daylon]

Yes, everyone - go buy an external hard drive and back up your photos TODAY! And get into the discipline of doing it every week or so. Also, buy that program just in case, worth every penny.

D.

Originally Posted by Bella

Glad to hear it all worked out . .. and thanks for lighting a fire under me to do what I know I need to and back up the past couple of months worth of images on a place other than my main hard drive.

-Cindy

[JPalmer]

Originally Posted by Daylon

Best $45 dollars ever spent in the history of photography. D.

In the history of ever....

That one made me laugh, because that's almost exactly how I phrase something like that.

"That was the best movie ever made in the history of ever."

[Debbi]

Originally Posted by jagphoto

Happy dance for you! That is great!

Ditto & Congrats. What a sigh of relief it must be.

[Arnor]

Hi Daylon,

Congratulations on work well done and files well recovered:)

Best regards,

[studiocygnet]

I'm backing up right now - beep - beep - beep - beep - beep - beep - ....

[DeLeon]

Good to hear....we all lax on backups every now and then...like I said before, I had to learn the hard way as well.

[ttusa]

Thank goodness it all worked out for you!

[hbwise]

Ahhh, the joys of the school of hard knocks. In a previous life I had my own aircraft business. I always joke I have the worlds most expensive MBA. I'm happy you got some of your photos back. I'm sure it will be a while before you get lax again.

[PhotoByMark]

Wife's computer hd crashed yesterday, had some stuff backed up but not all. I will try this proggie out. Thanks for the tip.

[Daylon]

Let me know how it works out... worked wonders for me.

Originally Posted by PhotoByMark

Wife's computer hd crashed yesterday, had some stuff backed up but not all. I will try this proggie out. Thanks for the tip.

[kenw]

a backup located in the same area (room, building) is not a backup. Fire, theft, flood can wipe them both out.

store the external drive somewhere else, use a backup service, or save to CD/DVD and keep them in separate/ remote locations. Nothing is guaranteed, but the idea is to minimize the potential for total loss.